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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28311576">Wet Work</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout'>Masu_Trout</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Among Us (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alien Impostor(s) (Among Us), Enthusiastic Consent, Extremely Alien Biology, Failboat Impostor, Human/Monster Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Impostor Yellow (Among Us), M/M, Medical Examination, Suicidal Thoughts, Tentacles, Xeno</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 15:42:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>10,199</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28311576</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Yellow was sent here to kill, but he's not exactly doing a very good job of it. Between faking expertise as the ship's electrician, avoiding the suspicion of his peers, and trying not to melt down out of sheer panic, he hasn't managed much in the way of sabotage and murder.</p><p>Then one of his crewmates finds out what he really is—and instead of having Yellow killed, White wants to know more. A lot more.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Crewmate/Impostor (Among Us)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>64</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>542</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Yuletide 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Wet Work</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknownlifeform/gifts">unknownlifeform</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Happy Yuletide! I also like impostor/crewmate with very alien impostors a lot, and I hope this take is something that appeals to you.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He could vent the oxygen out of this ship right now. </p><p>He should do it. He <i>should</i>. They can't kill him if they've all choked to death. And a dead ship's crew would mean—he shivers, tendrils twisting hungrily against the inside of his stolen suit—meat. Lots and lots of meat, enough to maybe finally sate the ache gnawing him apart.</p><p>It's a question with an obvious answer. Do what he was born to do: hunt, kill, feast. But...</p><p>"Hey, Yellow!"</p><p>He jolts out of his thoughts at the sound of the familiar voice. There's a white-suited man approaching him, walking with a casual confidence that's apparent even through the opaque helmet and oversized suit. He dodges the trails of multicolored cables hanging in loops from the ceiling and winding haphazardly across the floor.</p><p>They all have names, but it only took a few days on this mission for the group to start using the obvious nicknames instead. Yellow likes that. Makes it easier to remember them all. His mind isn't built for taking in details that don't have to do with pulse points and blind spots and dark, unguarded corners.</p><p>"Hey, White," he says. "I was just, uh—fixing some broken wiring?"</p><p>He plunges his hands into the mass of cables sticking out of the wall panel in front of him, trying desperately to look like he knows what he's doing. The man he replaced—killed—before The Skeld set off on its voyage was supposed to be the ship's electrician. Since he's wearing that identity now, like an ill-fitting spacesuit, those tasks fall to him.</p><p>Devouring someone doesn't give him any of their memories. Unfortunately. He doesn't have a clue what he's doing here, and all his frantic diet of hastily downloaded video tutorials has given him is barely enough to keep the ship limping along. He can tunnel into their network, connect his organics to the ship's system to close doors or set off disastrous chain reactions with a thought, but basic physical maintenance? <i>Hah</i>.</p><p>It's almost enough to make him want to laugh. Rustbucket like this, if he doesn't end up eating them they all might die anyway.</p><p>White doesn't look suspicious of him, though. He shrugs, the motion visible through the thick protective material of the suit. His comms hiss static as he says, "Ugh, I don't envy you. Glad someone's doing it though, yeah? You'd think they'd invest more in the ship's upkeep, but—no, easier to leave us running back and forth taking care of dull management tasks twelve hours a day instead of getting any actual research done."</p><p>"Ugh. Yeah."</p><p>Not that he'd get any research done anyway, but it would be easier to pretend, probably. He ate the only electrical technician assigned to this ship. He could make up some big words about electricity, throw them around whenever any of the rest of the crew asked. <i>Hydrovoltaic</i>. <i>Magneto-current.</i> <i>Cosmostatic discharge</i>. Who would be able to tell him he's wrong? Lying, at least, is something he's very, very good at. </p><p>Maybe White will walk away soon. There's no reason for him to be in electrical in the first place. Surely he'll have to head back to the medbay before too long.</p><p>Instead, White stands there watching him for a few awkward seconds longer before finally (and just as awkwardly) saying, "Hey, uh, so I didn't just come down here to bug you while you're working. I mean, I sort of did, but... look." He sighs. "The system's been bugging me about getting a whole-crew scan done for days now. It's getting to the point where it's interfering with other tasks I'm trying to do. I know it's a huge pain, and I know you've probably got a thousand other better things to do, keeping this piece of junk together, but I've hunted everyone else down already. If you've got fifteen minutes, it would help me out a lot."</p><p>Yellow freezes. That's... not good.</p><p>He can't agree to a scan. He really, <i>really</i> can't agree to a scan.</p><p>"It's..." His body is melting with nerves inside his suit, the skin he's worked so hard to mimic collapsing back into oily black tentacles and eyes and gnashing teeth. If he speaks like this, White's going to hear the change in his voice. Worse, even. If he doesn't fix this now, White's going to be able to see the difference right through the suit. </p><p>He puts his hands on what's supposed to be his knees and right now is more like two massive lumps of uncooked, writhing spaghetti. Breathes deep through all his many mouths, and then with a speed born of desperation starts ordering the strands to knit themselves back together, forces his body to remember the form he stole for it.</p><p>It's ten, fifteen seconds before he can speak. White is looking at him with concern. But when he finally gets his words back, he sounds human. Mostly. He hopes.</p><p>"Sorry. It's just—they're really that worried about it? Even on our ship?"</p><p>White makes a noise that might be sympathy. "I know, right? If they cared that much, you think they would've given us better security to begin with." He snorts. "You should've heard Red, she was complaining about it for <i>ages</i> about it yesterday at dinner. Not that I blame her."</p><p>"I mean," Yellow says, "you can blame her if you want."</p><p>That gets a laugh out of White. Red can be—abrasive. To say the least. Abrasive, and with a fondness for loudly criticizing the Company that might not <i>technically</i> be illegal, but definitely isn't going to be good for any of their careers if someone ends up reporting it after their voyage is over.</p><p>Not that any of them need to worry about that. Yellow can make sure their careers won't be a concern in the future.</p><p>"I mean, the problem is..." White hesitates a moment. "You heard what they found on the Azzik, right?" </p><p>The ship found floating aimlessly, its whole crew dead and torn to scraps of meat, holes ripped in the walls and floors with a brutal force no human could match. One of the salvage people who found the ghost ship uploaded their helmet's footage; even the Company hasn't quite been able to quash the videos. It's been the talk of every forum on the cosmonet for the past week.</p><p>Not all of Yellow's kind are as incompetent as he is. His batchmates would be ashamed of him if they could see him now.</p><p>"Er. I heard rumors. It's not real, though, is it? I thought... I thought that whole impostor thing was something the mil-force folks made up to see us civilians freak out."</p><p>White shrugs. He looks uncomfortable. Probably trying to figure out how to break to his poor, naive, innocent coworker that monsters are real and walk among them. </p><p>Yellow could almost laugh. But he doesn't really feel like laughing right now.</p><p>This isn't fair. White's always been kind to him. And he doesn't even <i>mean</i> to be doing what he's doing right now—cornering Yellow, demanding something that's going to expose him. Leaving him no choice.</p><p>Why couldn't it be someone else? Anyone else?</p><p>"It is what it is," White says. "Stupid they're being this paranoid, if you ask me. Our little tin can isn't exactly an impressive target. But it's just a scan, at least." He laughs. "I swear, when I first saw the memo come through, I was half-afraid they were going to be having me give everyone full physicals. Imagine trying to get Red to agree to <i>that</i>."</p><p>"Yeah. Just a scan."</p><p>Electrical's empty except for the two of them. There's no security cameras here. And the halls outside should be empty, too, this time of day; no matter how much he strains his hearing, he can't catch anything except White's breathing, and the hum of machinery, and the creaking of the ship. No one's coming. </p><p>He swallows with several of his mouths, staring at White. The door to electrical is easy to shut down. Trapping White in here with him won't take more than a moment. No one will hear White if he screams. And the vent in the corner... it's not meant to fit a person, but Yellow <i>isn't</i> a person. He's been in it before, when he needed to fix something deep in the ship and the cheap drones the Company has allotted to delve into the Skeld's vents weren't working. He can fold up his limbs and slip in easy. Whatever parts of White he can't finish he can hide in there, come back for the rest of it later. No one's going to find the body.</p><p>No more hunger pains. He'll finally feel full. All it'll take is a moment. Yellow licks his lips.</p><p>White was kind to him, when he first joined the crew: an awkward, standoffish man who would barely speak, who refused to eat with the rest of them. (A brand-new creature wearing a skin that fit just as poorly as its suit, understanding nothing going on around it and terrified of being caught and killed.) He lends Yellow cheap plastic-paged novels whenever he gets half a chance, talks to him about the day's tasks when they pass in the hall, invites him to dinner with the rest of them even when they both know he's going to refuse. White was the first person in Yellow's life to ever be kind to him.</p><p>If he goes for the scan, they'll find out. He'll be ejected. He can't imagine any worse way to die than that, than starving slowly in the endless freezing void of space. Screaming.</p><p>"White," Yellow says. "You have your pistol, right? I do, if you don't, but—"</p><p>"Uh. I mean, yes, I've got mine. Also, what?"</p><p>The pistol barely qualifies as one, from what Yellow knows; technicians onboard any Company operation are required to carry a weapon in case of hostile flora, or fauna, or just plain hostiles. (Say, for example, horrible monsters made of eyes and teeth and tentacles.) Like everything provided by the Company, they're pieces of junk—Yellow's heard Cyan moan about it often enough. But they don't need to be high-quality for what he needs to do.</p><p>Yellow points to a spot just under his chin. It wouldn't normally do anything much to him to be shot there; his anatomy doesn't have anything in common with a human's, except what he mimics. But inside his suit, inside his skin, he's sliding and rearranging parts of his body, pulling pieces of himself into alignment.</p><p>There are seventeen places in his body that need to be destroyed before he'll die. If he tangles them up together tightly enough, a single bullet will be enough to shred them all.</p><p>He's not going to kill White. And he's not going to die out there, in the cold emptiness of space.</p><p>"Look," he says. He doesn't know how to phrase any of this. Telling the truth is much harder than lying. "I need you to shoot me."</p><p>White flinches. "Yeah, sorry, question: <i>what</i>?" </p><p>Okay. Not exactly his best option, there. Could've phrased that better. Could've done every last bit of this better, really.</p><p>"I can't go in for the scan," he says. His own voice surprises him; he sounds like he's about to cry. He fumbles for the gun on his own belt, barely able to remember which suit pocket he stashed it in. He needs it. Now.</p><p>Does he have it? The more he pats himself down, the more his heart—or the lump of oily flesh he's using to mimic one, anyway—sinks. He's not sure if he has it, he's not sure if he's so incompetent he left his weapon in his bunk or just so incompetent he can't find his weapon on his own body. Neither option is good.</p><p>White reaches out a hand, but pulls it back before he breaches the distance between them. "I—look. If you're having a hard time, I get it. It's been hard on all of us being out here for so long. I can get you help, okay? You don't need to do anything drastic."</p><p>"I do," Yellow says. "I wish I didn't."</p><p>White's backing up. He looks like he might run. He can't be allowed to run.</p><p>Yellow sort of—unravels. That's the only way he can think to describe it; the ones who created him never gave him the words to talk about his kind. He gives up trying to hold his stolen form together, lets himself shift from four limbs and pale flesh and a single set of eyes and teeth back into what he really is: writhing, oily mass, lacking any coherent form except what his body decides to become between one moment and the next, a squirming ball of whiplike tentacles made of flesh that sprout eyes and teeth and claws in one moment and become formless again in the next. </p><p>He hasn't taken off his suit, which dulls the effect a lot. But despite the low, dim light and the thick nano-plastic fabric of his suit, designed to withstand fire and zero grav and anything else thrown at it, it must be obvious something's deeply wrong. Even without being able to see White's face, he can tell the moment he notices: he goes still and stiff, his hands clenching at his sides, his knees shaking before they lock into place. One hand slides carefully over towards a pocket on his suit. Finally going for his gun, Yellow realizes with relief.</p><p>"Oh," White says."That's... oh. Okay. I get it." And then, with a hint of rage in his voice, he adds, "You killed him, didn't you? You replaced him."</p><p>"I did."</p><p>"He was my friend."</p><p>Guilt slices through Yellow. He wants to apologize, but he forces himself to stay silent. He didn't know... </p><p>The man he was sent to replace—Louis Bagrov; 37 years old; born in a Company-owned town, too small to even have a name, tucked along the border of a south-central Mars settlement; single and childless—was picked because he was known to have no friends, no family, nothing but his career and his loyalty to the Company. The sort of person who can just disappear. </p><p>But if anyone could have befriended a person like that, it would be White. And Yellow devoured him.</p><p>White shakes his head. "I don't—how did you even get in here? How did you stay hidden for so long?"</p><p>"I..." He shouldn't answer. The longer they stand here, the greater the chance someone else wanders in. But he feels compelled to give White, at least, some sort of closure. </p><p>If only anyone else were here instead. He wouldn't feel bad about hurting Green or Black or Red's feelings.</p><p>"I mostly just played along," he admits. "Louis was good for that, no one expected him to talk much. And so long as I don't take my meals in the cafeteria, no one else needs to see me with my suit off. I had a routine."</p><p>"When did you kill him?"</p><p>"In Tarsus. Before the boarding."</p><p>He remembers it well: the domed port city with its thin atmosphere and silvery sky. The cheap, seedy capsule motel he tracked Louis to. The look on his face when he saw what he'd opened his door to.</p><p>It's almost a relief to admit it all. </p><p>"Wait," White says, "<i>Wait</i>. You were..." He pauses a moment, doing nothing more than standing there, and then asks, "You were <i>you</i> all along?"</p><p>He doesn't know how to even begin answering that question. "Yes?" he tries. "No?"</p><p>"I mean, you've been... this whole voyage? You've been here the whole time? Acting like one of us?"</p><p>"Oh. Yeah."</p><p>He can't tell what emotions White might be feeling right now—disgust? Anger? He hopes he doesn't blame himself. No one expects this kind of thing from someone they consider a friend. It's not his fault.</p><p>"So, the books I lent you..."</p><p>"They're not—contaminated, or anything. That's not how it works." Not how <i>he</i> works. "You don't need to throw them out. And"—he hesitates. He shouldn't be telling White this now, when it's too late too matter. When he's already revealed himself for what he really is. But it feels important to say. "They were very good. I enjoyed them. Thank you."</p><p>"Huh." White's still just staring at him, his face hidden and his voice unreadable. "That wasn't all an act?"</p><p>"No!" Yellow should lie—it would be kinder in the end, wouldn't it? To make this easy for White?—but every cell in his writhing body rebels at the thought. This meant something to him, the kindness. He wants White to know that. "It was supposed to be. But you're all, uh, mostly nice? And very interesting people. And I'm not actually very good at my job. Er. I mean. You can probably guess that, considering, um." He waves his suit's hand at everything: the tattered cables, White, the gun in his pocket. The impostor who didn't manage a single kill.</p><p>"Yeah," White says. He almost sounds amused. "Yeah, you're—not really doing so great on the whole sabotage-and-murder thing, are you? Have you eaten anyone since you got onboard this ship?"</p><p>"No."</p><p>"Are you planning to?"</p><p>"...No," Yellow admits. He can't even do the thing he was born and bred to do right.</p><p>"Okay." White nods, like he's made up his mind about something, and then before Yellow can react he reaches out and grabs hold of Yellow's hand.</p><p>It has to feel strange. Obviously wrong. The flesh inside the suit there is ropy, formless tentacles right now, and they squirm against White's touch from inside their nano-plastic cocoon no matter how much Yellow tries to force them still. But White doesn't flinch back or let go, just holds on even tighter.</p><p>"You should come with me," he says. "I need to clear you for a scan."</p><p>"I told you—"</p><p>"Listen to me," he interrupts. "In the case of exemption on medical or personal grounds, the shipboard doctor is authorized to perform a manual checkup in lieu of using the bioscan. I'm the doctor here. You understand?"</p><p>He almost does. He gets what White is saying, but... it doesn't make any sense. He knows what Yellow is now; he's surely seen the footage of what happened aboard other ships, just as surely as he can feel Yellow's body grotesquely squirming against his touch now. Any smart person would be running from the room screaming, or else lining up a shot already.</p><p>"...Why?" Yellow asks.</p><p>White shrugs. "You said you won't eat us. I trust you. And anyway"—he laughs—"maybe I'm just curious. Never gotten to meet an alien in the flesh before."</p><p>He's not exactly an alien. But he can't even begin to worry about that part of it right now.</p><p>It's too good to be true. Yellow thinks of being put on trial, dragged out in front of everyone and left to freeze in the void of space. Then he thinks about the cheap, plastic-paged book he still has tucked under his bunk, the one White lent him his very second day here.</p><p>He never had any reason to be kind to him. He's always done it anyway.</p><p>"All right," he sighs. He rearranges his body, slipping it back together into something close enough to human that he can walk once more, and then he lets White lead him out of electrical.</p><p>---</p><p>He's half-expecting to be marched back to the rest of the crew immediately, but instead when they stop it's in front of a sliding mechanical door with a little brass-coated plate reading <i>Anton Patel</i> glued haphazardly to the outside of it.</p><p>White's real name. He forgets, sometimes, that the rest of them have names they consider more theirs than the easy little nicknames they use for each other here. Yellow's lived almost half his life aboard this ship; <i>Yellow</i> feels far more real to him than the name of the man he killed or the serial-number ID the handlers gave them as they were training them up.</p><p>With a quick wave against the door scanner, White rushes them both inside. The moment they're safely there—the doors shut tight and sealed, the lab quiet except for the faint hum of the scanner in the corner—he turns to him.</p><p>"Okay," he says. Yellow can't tell if it's fear or excitement in his voice. "You ready for this?"</p><p>"For..." It hits Yellow then. "You were serious, about the checkup?"</p><p>"Why wouldn't I be?"</p><p>"I thought you were just going to—I don't know, put a signature somewhere or something. Forge it." He shrinks back. "It's not... you're not going to like it, you know. You felt it back there, didn't you, through the suit?"</p><p>"I did. And I'll be the judge of what I do or don't like, thank you. Look, here, if it helps..."</p><p>White fumbles for a moment at the helmet of his own suit, then pulls the whole thing off in one easy motion and sets it aside on the cot nearest him.</p><p>"There," he says. "Now we'll be even, right?" He grins. It's a nice grin. "I won't report you for breaking protocol if you don't report me."</p><p>It sure doesn't feel very even.</p><p>Yellow looks away; if he keeps staring at White, he's not going to be able to form proper sentences. Underneath the helmet he's solidly, thoroughly human, with healthy-looking brown skin and wavy black hair just a touch too long to be regulation plastered with sweat to the back of his neck. No matter what he says, it isn't the same. Nothing about the two of them is even remotely similar.</p><p>But—White hasn't reported him so far. This is the least he can do. </p><p>He reaches up and pulls his helmet off.</p><p>One second, two, then three... he tries to hold <i>Louis's</i> face together as long as he can. But the hunger and the stress has done a number on him; White takes a step closer, peering curiously at him—and suddenly concentrating feels like an impossible task. His body ripples, pale skin collapsing back into a shapeless, inky void of meat and teeth and eyes.</p><p>"Shit!" White says, jumping backwards.</p><p>Yellow winces. "Yeah. Sorry. It's—I told you."</p><p>A guilty look crosses White's face. "No, I should be the one saying sorry, that's... that was rude. You just took me by surprise."</p><p>Can't imagine why. A horrible, squirming monster melting out of a familiar face—what could possibly be disgusting about that?</p><p>Instead of taking the moment to properly flee, though, White steps closer again. "Wow. <i>Wow</i>. Are those all eyes? What's your vision like right now?"</p><p>His look of fear has melted away, replaced by intense curiosity. Yellow's not quite sure how to respond. He'd been sure this would be the moment White realized he's in over his head, that he's doing far too much by offering to shelter a creature like him. This reaction is strange.</p><p>Answering White's questions, though, is at least something he can do for him.</p><p>"Yeah, they're eyes. It's normal when I'm like this. They form and dissolve on their own. And my vision doesn't really feel any different, just... more complete? It sort of all just works itself out, I guess."</p><p>"Huh." </p><p>Before Yellow can say anything more, White's tugging his own suit farther down, unzipping it until it falls in a puddle of expensive nano-plastic at his feet. His underclothes are sparse: a thin tee, an equally thin pair of pants, both in that same medic-standard shade of white. The fabric clings to his wiry muscle.</p><p>Yellow's fairly certain the noise he makes is embarrassing.</p><p>"Sorry," White says good-naturedly, "I know I'm being, ah... really weird, to say the least. But working with that on is a pain in the ass." Hesitantly, he reaches a hand out. "You're just... really amazing. I mean, <i>wow</i>. Can I—touch you? Would that be okay? I can put the suit back on if you'd prefer, I just kind of thought it be more, uh, interesting this way, you know? It's not easy to get a full reading when my hands are wrapped in rubber."</p><p>"Um," Yellow says.</p><p>White winces. "Sorry. I'm being an asshole, aren't I? You're not a piece of meat. Or a science experiment."</p><p>He sort of is, actually. But that's incredibly beside the point, the point being: someone wants to touch him. <i>White</i> wants to touch him, specifically. Skin to skin, if his current state of dress is any hint.</p><p>"No, no, it's fine"—Yellow's all but tripping over his words—"it's just, it might be unpleasant? I'm told it's kind of oily, if you're not one of my kind."</p><p>"Oily sounds amazing," White says. The words come entirely in earnest and without a moment's hesitation. "Any texture you've got is fine, really. You're just incredible."</p><p>If the reassurance weren't enough, the praise would be. One good thing about being too hungry and panicked to hold onto his human form: the skin he has right now doesn't blush. Nothing for White to see on him there.</p><p>A few of his tendrils split from the ink of his face without so much as his permission, slipping out to grasp idly at the air nearest White's fingers.</p><p>"Oh." White's quieter now. "Can I really—?"</p><p>"Go ahead," Yellow says, hoping he won't regret this and absolutely certain he's going to.</p><p>White carefully reaches out, breaching the last few inches of distance between them. It seems like it takes an eternity, or maybe a picosecond, before his hands brush Yellow's writhing skin.</p><p>"Mm," Yellow hums, forcefully sealing all his mouths shut at once to keep himself from making any noise more embarrassing than that. </p><p>His tendrils are busy wrapping themselves around White's hand, twining themselves between his fingers with an acrobatic sort of glee; it's all he can do to force his body <i>to stay in place</i>, with every instinct he has urging him to break form entirely, become liquid and pour himself around White's body, rub himself against every inch of the man he can reach just to get the tiniest little bit more of this.</p><p>Is this what being touched feels like? For everyone, all the time? He's never had skin to skin contact before, and—it can't be, can it? The very thought's impossible. No one on board the Skeld would ever anything done if it were. No <i>human</i> would ever get anything if it were. The entire species would've relentlessly cuddled each other into starvation 200,000 years ago.</p><p>"Wow." White's staring at the tendrils happily wrapping themselves around his fingers. He rubs his thumb against a few of them, drawing another closed-mouth sort of rumbling gasp out of Yellow, and then says, "Is this okay? I'm not hurting you, am I?"</p><p>Yellow unsticks one of his mouths enough to manage a half-coherent, "No. You're—fine."</p><p>He forces himself to stop talking before he can follow that up with a <i>Please stick both your hands in me. Up to your elbows, if possible</i>. Somehow White doesn't think this is weird, or disgusting, or grotesque, and he really, really doesn't want to do anything to ruin that.</p><p>White's gaze darts from the part of Yellow that's on his fingers up to the central mass of him. Still oily, still writhing in what Yellow's pretty sure is a <i>distinctly</i> wormy sort of way... and still, apparently, not worth running out of the room screaming and hitting the emergency meeting button for.</p><p>Yellow's starting to worry about him, just a little. No one should have self-preservation instincts this poor.</p><p>"Good. Good. I'm glad. Could I, ah"—his throat bobs as he swallows—"get you up on one of the beds we've got in here?  Just to sit," he adds hurriedly, before Yellow can even say anything, "it'll make it easier to do, you know, a medically responsible examination."</p><p>It's a moment before Yellow can respond; he has to focus on anything <i>but</i> the fingers touching him right now and the promise that there's about to be more before he can finally get his voice even enough.</p><p>"I don't think you'd be able to diagnose anything I might have," he says, inanely. It's not that he wants White to stop. He's never wanted anything less than he wants that. But he feels a vague sense of guilt at the thought of disappointing White with his nonsensical body and his complete lack of knowledge about his own anatomy.</p><p>"No. Not yet, at least. But that's what research is for, isn't it? And I do still have my pride as a medic, you know. I'm not going to half-ass an examination just because one of the members of our little crew has certain, ah... medical conditions?"</p><p>Well, that's one way to put it.</p><p>Yellow gives a little nod with the part of him that's still vaguely head-shaped (and currently sporting about twenty-six eyeballs, because all of him wants to stare at White as much as possible) and wills his own body to let go of White. It's a lot more of a struggle than it should be—is he or is he not in control of his own limbs? He feels newly-hatched again, barely fifteen minutes old, tripping over his own tendrils as he struggles to stand—but finally, he manages to uncurl the tendrils and curl them back into the mass of the rest of him. Slowly, trying not to startle White with how off-kilter his body looks right now, he shuffles his way over to the nearest bed and hops up onto it, letting his mostly-sort-of-feet hang a few inches off the ground. He could stretch them down to touch the tile, but honestly he doesn't mind the sensation. It's kind of nice, kicking his feet back and forth.</p><p>White makes his way to the other corner of the room, and comes back holding a medical bag made out of what looks to be the same thick nano-plastic as their suits. He pops the clasp open with one hand, rummages around inside a moment, then looks up at Yellow with a smile so bright it makes Yellow's flesh shiver.</p><p>How can anyone have such nice teeth? Yellow's barely ever look so perfect, and he can make and remake as many sets as he wants whenever he feels like it. For a human, stuck with a measly one practice set before they're locked into their teeth for the rest of their life, it seems near impossible to have a smile that pleasant: bright white, but not so much to be unnatural; a slight hint of crookedness in one canine to make him seem approachable...</p><p>It's strange. He's never paid so much attention to a human's appearance before, with the exception of the one he replaced. And he doesn't want to eat White.</p><p>"So, apologies in advance," White starts, "because I'm sure this is all going to seem a bit stupid to you, but... I was thinking we could start with the standard?"</p><p>He holds up a little hammer in one hand, and in the other a noodly sort of thing that Yellow recognizes from some of the books White lent him: a stethoscope. Yellow can't imagine either will be of much help when it comes to his body, but he also doesn't think it'll hurt very much to be hit with a hammer like that. And, on top of that, it'll make White happy to be able to do it.</p><p>Yellow nods.</p><p>The hammer's up first, and it turns out to be a little different than Yellow expected: White crouches down beside him and taps it against the meat of his leg, right where his knee used to be when he was concentrating enough to have one, and then watches in silence as it squelches into the oily meat there. A few of Yellow's tendrils helpfully loop themselves around the handle of hammer, pulling it back out, and then offer it to White in case he wants to hit Yellow again.</p><p>It should be concerning, Yellow's pretty sure, that his body seems to have decided it no longer needs input from his brain the moment a chance to be closer to White comes along. But he's not hurting White, so it's probably fine.</p><p>"Sorry about that," he apologizes anyway, just in case he's being a nuisance. "Were you done measuring? Did you want me to leave that in?"</p><p>"No, no." White shakes his head, a laugh in his voice. "That... gave me all the data I need, I think. Though I've got to say, I'm shocked you blended as long as you did."</p><p>Yellow winces. He doesn't want to say it, but he's pretty sure it's not supposed to be this easy. His trainers always made it sound like he'd be lucky to last a day.</p><p>"You're all very... accommodating?" he tries, because living in close quarters for the past few months has taught him that <i>accommodating</i> is a kinder thing to say than <i>oblivious</i>.</p><p>White snorts. "Yeah, you're not kidding. Can't mimic a patellar reflex but you can fool seven of us for two and a half months. Doesn't exactly make us look good. Anyhow"—and with that he's back in medic mode again, all polite professionalism—"are you all right if I keep going?"</p><p>Yellow nods. He's pretty sure he'd be nodding even if the question was, <i>Do you mind if I set you on fire and tear you into a hundred thousand pieces?</i> The force of White's smile, the promise of his hands, is overwhelming.</p><p>He's a failure as an impostor. This isn't what he should be hungry for. But it's all but impossible to care about <i>should</i> or <i>meant to</i> or <i>purpose</i> when White is right here in front of him, warm and real and kind, and Yellow's creators are solar systems away.</p><p>The stethoscope comes next. White presses it to Yellow's chest, making him shiver, and holds it somewhere around where a heart might be on a being with organs. He listens a moment, brow furrowed.</p><p>"Huh. I don't know what I expected, but this wasn't it." He blinks. "Did your torso just <i>crunch</i>?"</p><p>"Oh, sorry," Yellow says. "I was breaking down some extra teeth."</p><p>"Extra..?"</p><p>And that means Yellow gets to show him something else about how his body works—gets to bask in the expression of open wonder on White's face when he turns oily black flesh into teeth and then back again, then eyeballs and fur and human skin, flickering back and forth between them at an impractically fast rate just so he can show off, just so he can stare at White staring at him a moment longer.</p><p>Showing this to anyone at all is strange enough. Showing it to someone who isn't trying to kill him for doing it feels even stranger.</p><p>"That's incredible," White breathes. His fingers curl at his sides, like he's dying to grab a pen; Yellow's fairly sure it's only the fact that writing this down could get them both killed that's stopping him from taking full documentation right now. "But then, how do you control your body at all? How do you <i>think</i>?" His face flushes. "Er, not that I think you <i>don't</i> think, but—you know what I mean."</p><p>Yellow hesitates a moment. Showing this off seems... more dangerous, somehow, than the rest of it. Like a human tearing open their chest to show the beating heart inside.</p><p>But he was ready to let White kill him before. So it's only fair to show him how that would've happened. And he really does want White to know. Explaining it all feels like the right thing, like he's finally managing to do more than run and hide and cringe away from danger.</p><p>Slowly, he unravels more and more strands of himself, pulling away the inky tendrils of his body until he can expose a core.</p><p>It's nothing much to look at, really: a walnut-sized lump embedded in one of his tendrils, solid and with a cracked-looking surface, the same void-like shade of black as the rest of him but with a opalescent sheen that makes it hard to miss. He extends the tendril he's caught it on until it hovers in front of White's face, close enough for him to get a decent look.</p><p>"Here. It's my core. One of them, anyway. They're the closest things to brains for our kind, I suppose? I have seventeen, but we can have up to fifty or so. Not," he hurries to add, "that it means I'm not as smart as them." He can take being weak and pathetic, but he doesn't want White to think he's unintelligent. Not with how brilliant White clearly is. "It's redundancy, mostly. I can regenerate so long as they're not all destroyed."</p><p>"Impressive." White frowns. "Wait, then, when you said I could kill you..."</p><p>Yellow can already see exactly where his thought process was headed.</p><p>"That wasn't a trick," Yellow reassures him. "I can move them around." He wriggles the one he's showing off now, just for the visual aid. "I was going to make sure you got them all first try."</p><p>He's expecting that to make White feel better. No one likes being tricked, after all. Instead, though, White just goes an ashy shade of grey, his face creased into a worried expression, and turns his saddest expression onto Yellow.</p><p>"Don't do that again," he says, "okay?"</p><p>Yellow flinches, pulling his core back. "Sorry," he says, "I didn't mean—"</p><p>Stupid. <i>Stupid.</i>. He should've known it would be too much. He's already grotesque enough without wiggling appendages around.</p><p>But White shakes his head harshly, holding his hands up as if to try and stop Yellow. "Not <i>that</i>. That's fine. More than fine. I meant the offering to kill yourself. That's not... that isn't right. You should want to live."</p><p>Yellow tilts his head-meat. It's a weird, useless little gesture, part of him entirely thanks to the crewmates here. It's strange how many of those he's already picked up: humming, reading for pleasure, tapping his toes when he's bored. Sometimes he feels like he owes more of himself to the people here than his creators.</p><p>"I do want to live," Yellow admits. "I'm really frightened of dying, actually. But you... you're a person, you know? And I was made to be expendable."</p><p>White looks like he's about to say something, but then Yellow's words hit. He blinks a moment, frown growing, and then says, "Wait. <i>Made</i>?"</p><p>Oh. Hm. He probably shouldn't say that. He's definitely, <i>definitely</i>  not allowed to say that. Yellow's body ripples with panic. But, then again—it's not like he can get <i>more</i> dead, right? The number of secrets he's given away already more than warrant his painful destruction if his creators ever find out about what he's done. So this is basically a freebie.</p><p>Yellow focuses on slowing his racing fear, on making his body stop rattling against itself, and then he says, "Yeah, made. Honestly, I don't know much about the species that made us myself, except that they don't like fighting their own battles... and, uh, they don't like you."</p><p>"Oh," White says. "Huh." It's not a good sort of <i>Huh</i>.</p><p> "We're, uh—we're basically like dogs, I guess?" Yellow continues, wincing as he says it. "Except, uh, really horrible dogs. Not like Cyan's. They train us and set us loose, and if we don't come back then that's how it goes."</p><p>Cyan's got a dog that follows them everywhere, a sweet little blue-furred Neptunian Terrier with the characteristic bulging eye. It's a bit rude to even compare the two of them, really; Yellow's pretty sure only one of them has ever seriously considered eating the rest of the crew, after all.</p><p>White stares at him a long, long moment and then, slowly, he wraps his hands around his arms. The medbay's warm, but suddenly he looks freezing in his off-white tee and thin pants.</p><p>"Are you all right?" Yellow asks.</p><p>"Fine. Fantastic. We've made enemies with a secret race of aliens with <i>shapeshifting monster technology</i>, and I am very possibly the only person alive who knows about it. That's great."</p><p>"Ah." Yellow twists against himself uncomfortably. Right. That. "I'm sorry," he tells him. "I know it's awful." Then, more on instinct than anything else, he adds, "But... I'll protect you no matter what, I promise. If anything happens, I'll make sure you stay safe."</p><p>It's a stupid, stupid promise to make. Yellow will be lucky if he survives the next week, let alone however far in the future he'll need to live to keep it.</p><p> He means it, though. From the bottom of all seventeen of his cores—the closest thing he has to a heart—he means it. White's life is more precious to him than he knows how to express. </p><p>White blinks at the words. His face does a funny sort of thing, like he can't decide whether to smile or cry. </p><p>"You really are something, aren't you? I... thanks. No one's ever promised to protect me from invading aliens before."</p><p>"Ah, well. Their loss." Yellow gives another little half-shrug. </p><p>"And for the record, I don't think you're horrible. Or a dog."</p><p>"Oh," Yellow says, deeply touched. "Thank you." It might be the nicest thing anyone's ever said about him.</p><p>White shakes his head. "Well, know that I've thoroughly embarrassed myself, freaking out like that—do you mind if we try that one again?"</p><p>It takes Yellow a moment to realize what White means by that, and to realize he's still got the core he was trying to show him curled up defensively next to his what-passes-for-a-torso. He extends it again, letting it hang in the air next to White's face, and holds it steady even when his body wants to tremble.</p><p>His reaction when White first touched him was... embarrassing. It'll be nice if he can keep a bit more decorum this time around.</p><p>Yellow braces himself as White reaches out—breathing deep through every pore in his meat, focusing on anything but the hand headed his way—and then White's touching him, wrapping his fingers around his core, fingernails digging gently into the crevices in the shell there, and Yellow <i>melts</i>.</p><p>It's not a conscious decision. There's nothing intentional about it. He makes a muffled sound, a jumble of vowels and consonants from different mouths all mixing themselves together, as half his body just sort of forgets how to hold itself together under the sheer onslaught of sensation lighting up his body. </p><p>It feels good. It feels so, <i>so</i> good. This is better than having his flesh touched. This is better than anything Yellow's ever experienced before. A small, keening noise escapes from the back of one of Yellow's throats—</p><p>And White rips his hand away, looking horrified. </p><p>"Shit, I'm so sorry," he says, face gone ashen.</p><p>"Mmpghrgl?" Yellow tries. And then, after rearranging some vocal cords, "What?"</p><p>"I didn't mean to hurt you like that." He frowns. "You know you can tell me no, right? I don't need to be able to do all of this. We are already well past standard medical protocol."</p><p>There's nothing less appealing in the known universe right now then telling White <i>no</i>. Yellow pulls himself together a bit, still shivering, still aching to be touched again, and says, "That, ah. That didn't hurt."</p><p>"I could hear you trying not to scream!"</p><p>"Yes," Yellow says. "Um."</p><p>It's strange how embarrassed he feels by this. There's no reason he can't just tell White the truth. But there's something humiliating about it, some piece he hasn't quite fit into place yet that makes the words reluctant to slip from his mouth. </p><p>Still, he forges on. The guilt on White's face is a stronger motivator than anything he might feel.</p><p>"It was a good noise," he manages, casting about awkwardly for how best to describe it all. "I wasn't expecting it. I've never had physical contact before except in training and there"—he winces at the memory—"it always came with pain. But when you touch me, it's pleasant." Yellow squirms a moment before finally adding, "Especially my core. The sensations are especially strong there. It was... overwhelming, a bit. That's all."</p><p>White's face goes from ashen to a deep, dark flush. He stands there a moment, staring at Yellow and worrying the edge of his lip, before finally he takes a heavy breath and says, "Okay. I'm sorry if I'm going in the wrong direction, here, but—are you saying it's a sexual thing?"</p><p>The missing piece drops into place with a heavy, humiliating <i>clunk</i>.</p><p>Oh. Okay. That's... </p><p><i>Is it?</i> Yellow wonders, his thoughts racing faster than the Skeld. A whole bunch of movies and books suddenly make a lot more sense if it is; he experimented with those aspects of Louis's form a few times, back when he'd first taken it, and that had been a fairly disappointing experience for him. Flesh against flesh sparking dull sensations, with nothing to say for it after except a mess. If <i>this</i> is how it feels for humans, though, no wonder they so often tend to be a bit obsessed with it.</p><p>Yellow pulls his core back, tucking it away, suddenly humiliated. He'd be blushing if he had the capillaries to blush with right now.</p><p>"I'm sorry," he mumbles, speaking so fast he has trouble keeping to just one mouth, "I never thought—I didn't mean—"</p><p>Enough. <i>Enough</i>. Yellow snaps shut all his mouths but one, and forces himself to speak clearly. He owes White that much.</p><p>"It didn't occur to me," he says. "But... you might be right. I'm sorry. I won't do that again."</p><p>White's still staring at him, still with that heavy flush across his cheeks. Yellow's body aches to reach out and press against it, to feel the strange heat of the skin there; he yanks the curious tendrils back into his mass, furious with himself for even thinking it.</p><p>"...Okay," White says finally. "Before you curl up into a ball of embarrassment, or whatever you're trying to do—"</p><p>Yellow winces. It's more of a vague amoeba of embarrassment, but the point still stings.</p><p>"—Just let me say," he continues, "that it's not a problem if it is."</p><p>The penny drops. Bounces. Doesn't quite make it in.</p><p>"What?" Yellow asks.</p><p>"I mean, unless it's a problem for you? If it is, then obviously it is." White laughs nervously. "I'm just saying, for me it's not a problem."</p><p>This time the words penetrate Yellow's entirely metaphorical thick skull.</p><p>"Oh," he says. "Oh! I. Okay."</p><p>White's not disgusted. White wants to touch him too.</p><p>He should've expected it, maybe, the first time White looked at his writhing mass of darkness and teeth and smiled like an awestruck child, but somehow it still seems surreal. White spared him, and took him here, and he's gone so far beyond simple kindness that Yellow doesn't even know how to describe this anymore.</p><p>He wants it, though. He knows that he wants it.</p><p>"I might," Yellow starts, "I might not be super in control of myself when you're doing that? I won't hurt you, but it's—hard not react to it."</p><p>White's grin grows along with his blush. By now he looks as though he was burnt by a solar flare from some passing star; it's a charming look for him.</p><p>"Also not a problem," he says. He holds out a hand, ready for Yellow to slide his core back into. "Let's science this."</p><p>It doesn't exactly feel like pure scientific curiosity anymore, or like a simple alibi-creating medical exam. It's far, far too intimate for that, and both of them know it. But Yellow has no desire to pull away, and White's no less eager than he is; when Yellow lets the core drop back into White's reach, he takes hold of it eagerly in both hands and immediately begins tracing the curves with his fingers.</p><p>Yellow gasps with a few mouths, groans with a few more, and then tries to force them all closed when he hears just how he sounds. He's not going to embarrass himself worse, he's not—</p><p>"It's okay," White murmurs gently, scraping a fingernail along the widest part of his core, "I don't mind, let me hear you," and Yellow breaks.</p><p>His body surges to meet his skin: slick tendrils catching around his arms, his torso, his legs, sliding beneath White's simple clothes to touch every inch of exposed skin they can find. White groans at the sensation, going half-limp, and Yellow's worried he's hurt him until he feels the way White's hands have tightened even further around his core, the way he's leaning back into it all and letting Yellow's body catch him. Trusting him.</p><p>Every movement he makes ripples of sensation through Yellow's body: his hands on the core, his skin brushing against Yellow's mass. It drives him on, urging him to find more places to touch, more reactions to pull from his small, strange, fragile, perfect human body. </p><p>He doubted it before when the books called this <i>hunger</i>. He never trusted a human to know what true hunger felt like. They were right all along, though; this is a hunger all its own, different to the one he knows so well and yet no less powerful for it.</p><p>A few of his questing tendrils slip below the fabric of White's pants, pressing themselves against the skin there and sliding lower until they find something that makes White pant and thrash in Yellow's grip. He's hard already, stiff and clearly aching with a clear fluid leaking from the tip; when Yellow lets himself wrap those tendrils around him there White shivers and tightens his grip around the core in his hands.</p><p>"Don't stop," he tells Yellow, staring up at one of the many eyes Yellow's conjured up to look at him with his own eyes half closed. "It's—<i>ah</i>, that feels good."</p><p>It feels weird to think of it as White's cock; too vulgar by half, and somehow almost presumptuous. But organ is too clinical, even with the two of them in the medbay now, and <i>genitals</i> just sounds absurd. It's all words Yellow is perfectly familiar with, made strange by a situation he never once dreamed he might find himself in.</p><p>In the end, Yellow stops trying to find the right term and instead just goes to work, looping his tendrils more closely around it and stroking in a rough approximation of videos he's seen on the cosmonet. If the way White's breath hitches on a moan  is any indication, he does a fair enough job of it.</p><p>Yellow wasn't quite sure what any of this would do for him, whether his body has anything in common with a human's at all. The more White strokes the core of him, though, his clever medic's fingers finding places to dig into that pull desperate noises out of him, the more he realizes there's at least one thing shared between them: he feels like he's building to some kind of peak, the sensations growing more intense the longer they go on until he can hardly bear it. He isn't going to last much longer. Not with what White is doing to him.</p><p>He tries to say something to White. It comes out a jumbled, wordless mess, but he's pretty sure White understands him anyway because he pats the tendril nearest his hand with an obvious sort of fondness.</p><p>"Okay," White murmurs, his voice sounding strained and broken and desperate, "I know, I know, just let me—"</p><p>Yellow runs his tendrils up the length of him once more, squeezing the way that he's found gets the most squirming out of him, and White gasps and shudders and comes with his hands curled around Yellow's core and digging in tight.</p><p>He looks so good like this, his clothes stretched and twisted to fit Yellow's body beneath them, his skin damp with sweat, and his hands shake and press tighter as his orgasm hits him, and that's all Yellow needs for the peak he was approaching to finally hit him.</p><p>There's no fluids when he comes, no spores or buds or anything he'd been afraid might appear. Just his body going limp and languid with his tendrils still wrapped tightly around White, cradling him, and his whole being seeming to pulse in time with White's heartbeat as the pleasure courses through him.</p><p>For once, he's glad he can't coordinate his mouths like this: it means White can't tell that he's murmuring his name through it, calling out to him with a desperation so intense it's pathetic as he wraps his entire form around him.</p><p>For a while they just lay there, half on the medbay bed and half on the floor: White breathing hard, Yellow undulating gently, neither of them choosing to speak.</p><p>Finally, White sighs. He pushes himself into a sitting position using a few of White's larger tendrils to steady him.</p><p>"Okay," he says. He runs a hand down his face, then tries again. "Okay."</p><p>"Okay," Yellow echoes. He's not sure if the repetition means anything, but it seems like the obvious thing to do. Some sort of human post-coital ritual, maybe?</p><p>White laughs. It sounds a little shaky. "Sorry. Trying to kick my brain back into working order again." </p><p>He swings a leg around, orienting himself back towards the ground so he can stand. Yellow tries not to feel empty at the lost of his touch, and doesn't succeed.</p><p>"Gross dereliction of <i>every</i> single ethical law I learned in medical school aside, that was, ah. Very nice." White accompanies the words with an awkward-sounding sort of cough.</p><p>"Thank you?" Yellow tries.</p><p>He doesn't have the slightest clue whether he should feel hurt or not; White's blush has returned in full force, a different sort to the one he wore when Yellow was making him come. He looks a bit embarrassed.</p><p>"It's not... oh, damn, I'm sorry. I'm being an ass. I shouldn't have done that. You're just"—he turns the full force of his unfairly handsome face back on Yellow again, his expression awestruck and worried in equal measure—"really incredible, you know? Absolutely amazing. And apparently," he scoffs, his voice turning sour, "that's enough to get me completely distracted from little things like <i>Asking you what you need to survive</i> to do that instead."</p><p>White feels guilty. The realization doesn't bring any further enlightenment with it, though: he has no idea what he can say to assure White he wanted it more than anything, that he'd love to do it again. For all he pretends, Yellow's never had a real job, or real human connections, or a life beyond this ship; whatever's driving this guilt is something he simply doesn't have the background to untangle. He opens half a dozen mouths half a dozen times, trying to find the words to make things as perfect as they were only a few minutes ago, and each time he closes them without saying anything.</p><p>That only seems to make it worse, because White seems to read something into Yellow's silence.</p><p>"Yeah," he sighs. "Well, if it's not too late to ask now—what can I do to help you?"</p><p><i>More of that,</i> is Yellow's immediate first thought, but he's still too stuck on the question being asked at all to say it.</p><p>"You're really..." he says instead, all too aware of the form he's still wearing, the oversized mass of pitch-black void that he is. "You really want to do that?"</p><p>"Of course," White says, giving him a look like he just asked the stupidest question of all time.</p><p>Maybe it is a stupid question. This is, after all, the man who looked at a creature he'd thought was a human losing its form and admitting to eating someone and thought, <i>Huh, I think I'd like to get myself alone in a room with him</i>. It's obvious White is different to other humans. But somehow he still wasn't quite expecting this.</p><p>"Um," he says, still forcing himself to stay away from his first answer, "I guess food is the main thing. My nutritional requirements are higher than yours. But—"</p><p>"I can do that," White says, like it's no big deal at all.</p><p>"I am <i>not</i>," Yellow continues, "stealing food from anyone else."</p><p>He likes the crew here, mostly, and even the ones he finds hard to deal with still don't deserve to starve.</p><p>White chuckles. "You are a terrible saboteur, you know that? But it's all right, you don't have to. Our ship's equipped for ten, even if we're running a crew of eight right now. I'll record that the missing food was spoiled."</p><p>Yellow can barely even put together a response to that. The prospect of food—real, proper food, something to help quiet the gnawing hunger in the back of his mind, given to him as simple as that—is too good to be real.</p><p>"I," he tries, and then, "thank you."</p><p>"Of course," White says with that same casualness. After a moment and a glance at the door, he adds, "Hey, by the way, could you, uh"—he makes a hand gesture vaguely like crumpling a piece of trash—"compress again? We've been in here a bit too long, I think, and if anyone decides to break the lock I'm not going to be able to do much to defuse that."</p><p>"Oh!" Yellow squirms, flustered. "Oh, of course."</p><p>He'd like to think no one would break the lock, but... no. Red definitely would. She wouldn't hesitate.</p><p>He focuses on his stolen face, all the details that are burned into his memory more deeply than anything else he knows, and slowly the form that's become his over the past ten weeks reasserts itself on his shapeless body. Tendrils become arms and legs, his flesh shapes itself back into head and torso and everything else he needs, skin crawls its way over his body as his superfluous eyes and mouths deconstruct themselves into the single set he needs.</p><p>It's only a few seconds before the thing standing in front of White is once again Louis Bagrov, Age 37, Ship's Electrician.</p><p>White's staring, mouth open. Yellow gives him a smile. "Pretty quick, isn't it?"</p><p>"Hah. Yeah. You're not kidding." White swallows. "You're amazing. I mean, it's amazing."</p><p>He half-expected White would be a little bit <i>less</i> somehow, with him back in his human-shaped form. A little less handsome when he has fewer eyes to stare with; a little less charming when he has his own human form to focus on. There's nothing any less overwhelming about him now, though: he's still every bit as impressive, every bit as all-consuming, as he was a few minutes ago.</p><p><i>Is this love?</i> Yellow wonders. The descriptions he's read of the feeling are all so physical, and he doesn't have a racing heart or sweating palms to judge himself by. But he wants to twine himself around White again, get inside him to become the breath racing through his lungs and the blood pumping through his heart, and that... it feels like something, at least. Something important.</p><p>"I should go," Yellow says. "Before. You know."</p><p>"Yeah," White agrees, for once not the talkative one. He looks like he wants wants to say something more, but as Yellow waits the silence only grows.</p><p>Yellow's suit is right where he left it. Once he's inside, able to hide his face, it'll almost be like none of this ever happened. Except, of course, for the part where White knows him better than anything living being in the universe now. He'll never be able to erase that; he doesn't want to erase it.</p><p>Before he goes, though, there's something he needs to do. A theory he needs to test.</p><p>"Sorry," he tells White, "I hope this isn't too weird," and then before he can second-guess himself he ducks forward and presses a quick kiss to the side of White's mouth with his mimicry of human lips.</p><p>"Ah," White says. His hand comes up to touch the spot where Yellow kissed him. He looks as red as he did when they were—fucking, maybe? It feels strange to call it that, but there's little else it could have been—or maybe even redder, and as backwards as it should be Yellow understands completely.</p><p>It feels almost more intimate to touch him like that, stripped away from the excuses of alien exploration and scientific curiosity. It makes Yellow want it even more. And that, he supposes, probably answers his question.</p><p>"Thank you again," he tells White, "for all of it," and then he's slipping into his suit and out the door with a speed no human could match.</p><p>He already has a new list of tasks in mind, and this time none of them have to do with sabotage.</p>
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